These nine (the top one didn’t scar) incense brands were done by allowing incense cones to burn out completely on the flesh while meditating (so it’s part body ritual, part permanent body modification) — BME has a small ritual branding gallery as well with a little more stuff.
Based on the original artwork by Robert Lawson (click the link to read the story) from Ferdinand the Bull, I really like this tattoo by Anna Banana at Evolved in Columbus, Ohio.
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(1) Great photo. (2) Tattoo by Pawel “Buli” Bulak at Ambulitorium in Poland. Anyway, I’m done for today, but I think I should be back on schedule to keep this blog updated… Thanks again everyone for your support of BME and ModBlog over the past year.
Habakuk (check out his wonderful bonus gallery if you’re a BME/HARD member) sends in this shot of one of his recent scrotal suspensions done at his home in Africa. Oh, and if you’re wondering where his penis is, it’s perfectly intact, it’s just hidden in the scrotal/pubic folds from the extreme distortion caused by the suspension.
Wow, in terms of healed scarifications (*it’s not totally healed — about three months old in the picture), this definitely places on my top five list… It just looks so natural. These were done by premiere scarification artist Ryan Ouellette, who’s just set up a new site at PBAscars.com that’s dedicated to his work (and of course he has a gallery on BME as well).
…Or a habitual passport misplacer. One of the two, I’m sure. This was done by Aaron Prosser at Whitsunday Tattooing in Airlie Beach, Queensland, Australia (who I think wishes that the face had been included in the tattoo).
Not that Dustin Robbins of Iris Piercing in Salt Lake City, Utah didn’t do a very nice nipple placement on this customer, but I am soooo into the scar. I know on some levels it’s wrong to fetishize things like that, because it’s essentially getting off on someone else’s pain, but I really think that it’s very difficult to express beauty without putting it into context, and that’s what life scars (versus chosen scars) give a person I think…
Emilio Gonzalez of Mithos Tattoo, one of many practitioners on an extended world tour, sends in this unusual knuckle skin removal…
Sorry for the downtime. I’m back for now with lots of stuff prepped, but I should warn that there will be a little downtime over the next week when we move ModBlog to a dedicated server, and I’ve got a bunch of surgeries over the next (probably) month. They’re not expected to be a big deal (click here if you want to see what they’re removing — and have a chuckle at the crazy dude that thinks it’s an implant and that I’m a millionaire), but they’ll mean the occasional day or three of silence.
Anyway, let me start out 2007 with Jacques‘s liberty-themed tattoo done by Kat at Underground Arts in Wellington, New Zealand… I figure that BME and its members are in a constant state of testing where personal liberty begins, and at what point the State is willing to step in and punish you for taking control of your own body, assisting someone else in doing so, or in my case, publishing it and promoting it. So fingers crossed that we see those liberties continue to expand in 2007. Although we’ve had a couple rough patches, I think the notion that “freedom of expression” is a right and “self ownership of the body” is an undisputed truth, grow closer to being universally accepted.
